


The Incredible Expanding Man

by purplegertie



Series: The Incredible Expanding Man [1]
Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gangsters, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Belly Kink, Inflation, M/M, Stuffing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-20
Updated: 2015-03-16
Packaged: 2018-01-20 04:15:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1496269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplegertie/pseuds/purplegertie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jensen's a mobster boss. Jared makes a living swallowing whole watermelons in a carnival sideshow. They're a <del>romance</del> business partnership made in heaven.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Despite the crack premise, this really is mostly about stuffing and inflation and belly kink. I promise.

The carnival's a filthy, tumbledown affair. Jensen pays for his ticket and heads in the direction the ticket seller pointed him to. Under the big top there are, one presumes, clowns and acrobats and perhaps a sad and ill-kempt lion, but this way sits the sideshow tent, and that's what Jensen's here for.

There are posters up of the exhibit Jensen's come to see. _The Incredible Expanding Man_ in too-bright colors above clearly photoshopped images of a man so smoothly round he might be a water balloon about to pop. Jensen ducks inside the tent.

The crowd is thin, milling around the edges of the tent, looking at Ripley's-style images of extreme human bodies. In the center, roped off from the crowd, is a wooden stage with a platform, and on the platform and nude to the waist sits The Incredible Expanding Man. He's young and mostly lean except for a rounded pot belly, and he's laughing with the caller. He has an infectious grin. Also on the stage with a row of five watermelons, increasing in size from those 'personal' watermelons up to a monster of a melon, two feet long and a good fifty pounds if Jensen's any judge.

Since the man is clearly not performing at the moment, Jensen surveys the tent. Near the entrance there's a pedestal with a sturdy glass jar secured to the top, a handful of coins and bills sitting inside. The placard next to it explains that at promptly three o'clock, the money in the jar will be counted, the appropriate melon will be selected, and The Incredible Expanding Man will swallow it whole. The more money, the larger the melon. 

Jensen checks his watch. It's two-thirty. He catches the eye of the man standing guard at the door, pulls out his wallet, and counts out hundred dollar bills. It takes him a few moments. By the time he's reached twenty the doorman has caught on and started counting them out to the crowd. They gather around Jensen, and they start counting, too. None of them seem to recognize him.

That grandaddy of a melon on the stage costs five thousand dollars. Jensen counts out fifty bills and pauses while the crowd cheers on their benefactor. They know they'll see something to see today, whether a real show or an Expanding Man who isn't so incredible after all. Then, when the cheering has begun to subside, Jensen counts out five more. 

The crowd drops silent.

"Shall we?" Jensen asks the doorman.

Maybe the doorman knows his face, or maybe he just has good sense. Twenty minutes until three, he nods up at the stage, and the caller begins his spiel.

Jensen turns, finally, to get another look at the Expanding Man. While the caller talks up the wonders, the glorious feats of human achievement the crowd is about to witness, the star of the show's grinning at the crowd and rubbing his belly, to more cheers. Every so often he glances back at Jensen and the grin draws tight. 

Finally the caller's preshow jabber winds down, and a hulking roustabout walks onto the stage, hoists the watermelon onto his shoulder, and carries it to the platform where the Expanding Man sits with his legs dangling. Another roustabout comes in from the other side, and between them, they lift the watermelon up to the Expanding Man's mouth, end-first.

This, this is what Jensen came to see.

The crowd is laughing, jeering, because there's no possible way that even the narrow end of the watermelon is going to fit into the man's mouth. And then he throws his head back once, twice, and something seems to unhook in his jaw. His mouth stretches wider and wider, and he mouths obscenely on the end of the watermelon, the crowd's raucous approval. 

And then the watermelon begins to slide in. The Expanding Man's got his hands on it now, to steady it or himself, his whole torso is convulsing like a cat hacking up a hairball. Except the opposite is happening: with every convulsion, more of the watermelon goes into his mouth. An inch at a time it engorges his throat, the skin drawn pink and fragile and taut around the watermelon. 

Mixed in with the cheers now are sounds of "Eww" and "Ugh." Some of the spectators turn away and leave. Ever so slowly, the watermelon works farther down the man's throat, into his esophagus, farther still into his belly, where it stops its southern progress and bulges outwards.

It's a good fifteen minutes before the watermelon has settled, huge and rounded and unmistakable, in the Expanding Man's expanded belly. His throat has contracted to its previous shape and size. He snaps his head back, and whatever he did to his jaw before is undone. He blinks somewhat dazedly across the crowd. Sitting on the platform, he looks like a perfectly ordinary young man whose hair is falling in his eyes and whose stomach happens to be protruding with the mass of an enormous watermelon.

He works his jaw a couple of times, and then he manages a grin for the crowd. The crowd, fallen silent, cheers again. He grins wider.

The caller goes on a bit more about the amazing feat of human flexibility they have all seen before them. He wraps it up a little abruptly – perhaps because he has noticed, as Jensen has, the way the Expanding Man's face has gone drawn and pale. Shortly afterward the crowd is shooed out, with invitations to come back for the next day's performance, and the Expanding Man leaves the stage, cradling his swollen stomach.

The doorman and roustabouts wisely do not shoo Jensen. While the last stragglers leave, he walks up to the platform and tells the caller, "I'd like to have a word with him."

"Oh, I'm sorry, the performers aren't available just after performances, perhaps you'd like to come see him tomorrow."

Deliberately Jensen draws another five hundred dollars out of his wallet. "The man's follows him his hand like a tracking beam. "It was a great performance," Jensen says. "I'd say it's worth a bonus. So, should I put the bonus in the jar, or should I give it to you?" 

"I'll take it," the man says immediately. "You said you wanted to see Jared?"

"Please," Jensen says, and grins a shark grin.

"Right this way."

Jensen follows the man through the back flap of the tent, across grass beaten flat by foot traffic, to a camp trailer sitting on the back of an old Chevy pickup. The caller goes around the back and pulls the door open without knocking. "Jared," he calls cheerfully. "Someone to see you."

Incoherent mumbling follow. The caller steps aside with a flourish, and Jensen walks up the stairs.

The trailer smells as old as the trunk looked. The Expanding Man – Jared – sits on a bench that probably once sat behind a table. Now there is only Jared, still cradling his belly. He heaves a breath when he sees Jensen. "You're the guy with the big bucks," he says.

"That's me."

"So what do you want?" Jared rolls his eyes to the ceiling. "You gonna report me as unregistered? Or do you just want to touch me a little?" He frames his belly in his hands, a mockery of an invitation.

Jensen sits on the bench opposite Jared. "Is this how you treat the guys with the big bucks?"

Jared looked at him, hard. "I might be out of practice. I don't meet that many of them."

"I'm not interested in touching you," Jensen says. It's a little bit of a lie. He doesn't want to touch Jared's belly, particularly. He would not be opposed to touching various other, less distended and grotesque parts of Jared. But that's neither here nor there. "And I don't care if you're unregistered."

"So you're here why, then?"

"I have a business proposition for you," Jensen says.

"A what."

"I'd like to make it over dinner. Although perhaps not tonight." He glances at Jared's stomach.

Jared snorts wryly. "Yeah, I'm definitely done for the day. Sometimes if the afternoon show is cheap I do an evening performance, you know? But not today."

"Tomorrow?"

"How about coffee? I could probably manage coffee." 

"Dinner," Jensen says firmly. "And I want you able to appreciate it."

"You realize I do the show every day, right?"

"Be sick. It won't even be hard to sell, because you're not looking that great right now."

Jared grimaces and massages his taut, swollen belly. Instead of disagreeing, he says, "I don't know you."

For what Jensen intends to be the final time on the grounds of this dismal carnival, he pulls out his wallet. He places five hundred dollar bills in Jared's hand. "I'm the guy who's giving you five hundred dollars to come to dinner."

"I think that makes me a hooker," Jared says blankly, staring at the money.

"Think of it as a tip. Come to dinner."

Jared lifts his eyes to Jensen's. His fingers close around the bills. "Sure, what the hell."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI this chapter has a very brief and non-explicit discussion about poop. It's for plot reasons, I promise, and it won't come up again.

Jared has second thoughts after the guy in the suit leaves, but there are still five hundred dollars sitting crisp and pretty in his hand, and that seems worth taking a chance on. ‘Business proposition' seems likely to be the sort of thing incompatible with carnivale sideshow work, and Jared? Jared would not be even a little opposed to that.

So he settles himself in the bed above the truck cab with an old Stephen King and tries to ignore his stomach's strained gurgling. About eighty pages on, the internal pressure suddenly relents a little, and there's more gurgling. That's the rind broken through, then. Jared rubs at his stomach as the watermelon inside starts to collapse in on itself. The surface of his stomach is lumpy now instead of round, and massaging it starts to do some good. He belches a few times and sprawls onto his back, rubbing his belly with both hands. He digests faster that way, he's found. Anyway, it feels good. For the next half an hour, maybe even an hour if he's lucky, Jared will live in the happy medium between those two habitual extremes of his existence, _gorged_ and _starving_.

He has to be pretty damn full to start with, though, to ever get to the point he is right now, and since Gen's made him swear off cardboard and dumpster diving, it doesn't happen often. Few crowds are as free with their wallets as Mr. Suit. 

That gets him wondering again just how much of an idiot he is, but damn it, five hundred dollars does a lot of talking. He wants to know what else the guy has to say.

\--

Mr. Suit appears at the gate promptly at six, driving a car that looks fairly new, but not flashy. Not a Beamer or an upper-end SUV like Jared was expecting. Jared climbs in the passenger side and shuts the door, and Mr. Suit makes a face approximating a smile.

"So I'm Jared," Jared says.

Mr. Suit glances his way. "I heard."

"And you are?"

"Jensen," Mr. Suit says shortly. Okay then. 

"So where are we going?" Jared asks.

"It's up to you. Steak, Italian, burgers and fries? I know a nice place that does gourmet. You'll never want to eat a burger anywhere else again."

Jared blinks at this verbosity. Burgers sound nice, comfortable, but he also can't afford to never want to eat another burger. Besides, might as well break the bank. "Steak."

"Good man."

Jensen pulls them up in front of a discrete little storefront and opens the door for Jared. They’re seated immediately in a quiet little corner in the back, empty tables between them and any possible prying ears. Jared looks over his menu and feels his eyebrows rise. This is clearly one of those places where if you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it. He shoots Jensen a glance, but Jensen is perusing the wine selection, completely unruffled. 

And, well. If this is the kind of place Jensen brings people to whom he wants to make business propositions, then that only confirms all Jared’s instincts about the situation, even if he’s still unclear on what exactly the the situation is.

When the waiter comes around again, Jared orders the largest steak. Might as well go large, and it’s not like Jensen’s going to be surprised at his appetite. Far from that, Jensen looks almost pleased, if that lift at the corner of his mouth is anything to go by. It melts quickly down again, though, so it’s hard to say for certain.

Someone brings wine and pours them each a glass, and then leaves the bottle on the table. Jared waits until Jensen has swirled his around in his glass and taken the first sip, and then Jared blurts, “So, a business proposition.”

Jensen’s eyes snap up. “There’s some things I’d like to know first, if you don’t mind.” His tone suggests that it would be in Jared’s best interests not to mind.

“Sure.”

“So, how old were you when you ran away to join the circus?”

A startled laugh escapes Jared. “Uh. Nineteen, maybe?”

Jensen shifts both his elbows onto the table and folds his hands at his chin. “Go on.”

Jared shrugs. “There’s not a lot to tell. No family left, I have a high school diploma but no marketable skills, and feeding this monster is a bitch.” He pats his belly. Hunger’s starting to pinch; another hour and he’ll feel so hollow he’ll be aching. 

“So, watermelon.”

“It looks impressive. Plus there’s the snake-jaw thing. People like that. Gross and weird-looking, but not so weird people are going to call Registration in on me.”

“Tell me about that.” Jensen leans in. “Your power doesn’t seem like one that they’d need to neutralize. Why don’t you register?”

Jared hunches in. “I just don’t like it. Them. Registration.” Jensen’s just looking at him, waiting, and Jared blurts, “They neutralized my mom.”

“Ah.” Jensen leans back in his chair, apparently satisfied, as he damn well should be. “And how does it work? You apparently recharge pretty fast.” He glances down Jared’s torso, though Jared’s stomach is mostly hidden from view below the table. 

“If by ‘recharge’ you mean, ‘nearly starve to death,’ then yeah. I had a huge breakfast, or I wouldn’t have lasted until dinner. My digestion is totally wacked.”

“And what did you eat for breakfast?” 

“Uh. A bunch of yams, and a gallon of sweet tea.” Sweet tea is his favorite, and while fluids never last him as long as other stuff, he had five hundred dollars in his pocket that said he’d have all the food he could eat for at least two weeks, maybe three if he went heavy and cheap. Live a little, right?

“How many yams?”

“Fifteen pounds, probably?” 

Jensen looks startled. Jared doesn’t know why; the guy saw him swallow a thirty-pound watermelon yesterday. “How do you cook them in that kind of quantity?”

“Oh, I don’t cook them. I don’t really have the facilities. I just, you know.” Jared mimes tossing one back. “Oh, and Gen was making eggs, so I had a plate of those.” For flavor. Because sometimes a guy just wanted to eat something because he wanted it.

“Gen?”

Jared rubs at his knuckles. “Friend. The truck’s hers. She kinda, uh, took me in?”

Jensen nods to himself and offers Jared a knife-edge smile. “So what I’m getting from this is that you don’t do fine dining often.”

“No, sir,” Jared says, a little gleefully. _Steak_.

“And what happens if you don’t get enough to eat? Do you go into hibernation or something?”

Jared should probably be annoyed at all the questions, but again, _steak_. “Naw, my stomach just starts really hurting, until I just get so hungry that I eat something I shouldn’t.” Jensen’s eyebrows rise, and Jared explains, “You know, cardboard, old shoes, the oil from the fryer.”

Jensen leans in, eyes keen with interest. “Not just food, then. You can eat anything?”

“Well. I haven’t tried poisons? Or anything really sharp. But basically, yeah.”

“But there are side effects.”

“Not really. I mean, I feel a little different depending on what I’ve eaten that day, but not like it hurts me or anything.”

Jensen’s brow furrows. “Then why shouldn’t you eat other things?”

Jared makes a face. “Because Gen says it’s bad? I don’t know. Like, I’m a human being, so I should eat food.”

“Does an all-cardboard diet sustain you, or would you die of malnutrition?”

“I’ve never tried it. Not long-term. Just, you know.” Jared shrugs. “When real food’s hard to come by.”

“Mm.”

Their salads arrive. Jensen’s is on a plate. Jared’s is in a serving bowl, filled to the brim. There are salad tongs on top. “Did you...” Jared begins, but Jensen’s smugness answers that question. “How do you want me to eat this?”

“Any way you like.”

Jared glances around the restaurant, and it’s only now that he realizes that they are in fact the only customers. Had there been others when he walked in? Did Jensen rent out the entire restaurant, just for this?

Jared decides abruptly that he doesn’t care how it happened. He picks up a fork, stabs some greens with it, and sticks them in his mouth. “Oh my god,” he says through the leaves. He swallows and takes another bite. “Oh my god.”

When he finally thinks to look at Jensen, Jensen’s eyebrows are raised. “Been a while?” he asks, smirking over the innuendo.

This time, Jared makes an effort to swallow before he talks. “Produce is expensive, you know?” Although judging by Jensen’s everything, Jensen probably doesn’t know. Even aside from that, though, the dressing is really good. 

Three more bites in, Jared gives Jensen another sharp glance. He finds Jensen still watching him speculatively, a little clinically, even. “Don’t hold back on my account,” Jensen says, like the shark encouraging the clownfish to come out and play.

And Jared doesn’t even give a damn. He’ll die full and happy. He lays his fork aside, picks up a third of the salad between the tongs, and opens his mouth. He _really_ opens his mouth, and he stuffs the entire leafy bunch down his throat. He swallows once, more out of habit than anything, and he can’t help but grin. Salads are not nearly substantial enough for his usual needs, but they _tickle_ going down, even if he can’t really taste them when he eats them that way.

“Good?” Jensen asks, faintly indulgent.

“Hell, yes.” Jared goes in with the tongs again, comes out with another leafy bunch, swallows. Once more and the salad is gone except for a sad little leaf here and there, stuck to the side of the bowl. Tonight Jared is living large; he doesn’t even _need_ to pick each and every one off. “That was awesome, man.”

“There’s more where that came from, you know.”

“More salad?”

“More everything.” There’s a glint in Jensen’s eye that suggests he’s talking about something else, that maybe they’re going to get down to business now. But he blinks, and the glint is gone. Meanwhile a basket full of bread and little bowls of oil for dipping have appeared on their table.

Jensen leaves most of the bread for Jared. Only once does he ask with a mocking degree of concern whether Jared will still have room for the main course. “Not a problem, man,” Jared assures him, unruffled. Nothing can ruffle him now.

And then the steak comes, and it is twenty-four ounces and medium rare and _juicy_ , and he wants to swallow the whole thing in one go but also cut it into tiny squares and eat them one at a time. He compromises by cutting it into pieces somewhat less tiny than he imagined. If he could die of happiness, the first bite would have killed him. It practically melts on his tongue. 

He comes back to himself when there’s only a half-dozen pieces of steak left on his plate. He looks up to find Jensen eyeing him... hungrily, Jared would say, whatever the guy said about not wanting to touch him. 

“Enjoying yourself?” Jensen asks.

“What do you think?”

Jensen purses his lips. “I think you should take off your shirt and show me the damage.”

The back of Jared’s neck prickles with unease. It’s a familiar sensation, and Jared’s seen the point in paying it much attention. A sense of danger isn’t really that useful when you don’t have any choice about what you do next. 

Jared scoots his chair back and gets to his feet. Might as well give the guy a show; he’s definitely paid for it. Jared lifts his polo shirt over his head, and then his undershirt beneath it, and finally there Jared is in all his glory. He glances down – he’s visibly swollen, between the bowl of salad and the basket of bread and the twenty ounces of steak, but not weirdly so. Right now he could still pass for human – for a _normal_ human, unneeding of Registration or neutralization.

“Like what you see?” he asks Jensen. He rolls his hips a little, juts his belly out. When he catches Jensen’s eye, yeah, there’s a spark of lust there, and Jared’s been around the block plenty enough times to tell, but mostly Jensen just looks _interested_. 

He steeples his fingers under his chin. “Can you eat more?”

Jared feels another shiver – from cold, this time. “Yeah,” he says slowly. “Like what?”

Jensen pulls a briefcase out from under his chair. He cracks it open, and inside is a stack of papers, tidy, two and a half inches thick at least. He cocks an eyebrow at Jared.

Jared decides he’s had enough standing and enough shirtlessness. He puts his clothes back on and slides into his seat. “I mean, yeah. I can eat that.” 

Jensen clears their plates and glasses to the side and slides the briefcase across the table. 

Okay, then. Jared’s going to eat an entire stack of paper _now_ , on top of his dinner. “Could we get it wet, maybe?”

“Do you need to?”

Jared shrugs. “It’s easier than crumpling it all. And I don’t want to get papercuts in my mouth.”

Jensen laughs with something like real humor. He snaps his fingers, and a waiter appears. He whispers in the man’s ear. 

Jared doesn’t strain to hear; he knows better. Anyway, all the good food is starting to settle nicely. His gut feels pleasantly heavy. If he could stop right here, he could be happy for an hour, maybe two. 

A minute later, and a large glass dish, like for casserole, appears on the table by his elbow. The waiter brought wine, too; he pops the cork and sets it to the side of the table. Jensen takes a whiff of the open bottle. “Can you get drunk?”

“I can get tipsy, kinda. That’s about it.”

“Well, we’ll give it a try anyway,” Jensen says. He pours wine into the casserole dish – except it probably isn’t that, because upscale restaurants like this probably don’t bake casseroles - and then he slides a stack of papers half an inch thick into the standing pool of wine. He pours more wine on top, until the paper was stained pink. Then he gives Jared a hard look and snaps his fingers again. A moment later, the waiter is handing Jared a white, papery bib. Jared blinks at it.

Jensen takes pity on him. “Usually they’re for lobster,” he says.

Jared closes his hand around the bib. He could say no. Jensen _could_ shoot him in the head and leave him in an alley, but why would he bother? More likely he’d take Jared back to the carnival and leave him there, and tomorrow Jared would swallow a watermelon and dream of enchanted steak for the rest of his life.

Jared unfolds the bib and ties it around his neck. Then he picks up his fork. There’s a new one on his napkin that must have appeared with the casserole dish. He snags a few damp sheets of paper and sticks them in his mouth. They dribble. The bib was definitely a good idea. The wine has already softened them halfway to mush, though, and after a couple of chews, he swallows. Pieces of paper stick to his teeth. Paper doesn’t taste like anything much, so the only flavor at the back of Jared’s tongue is wine.

He keeps doing that, one forkful after another. The forkfuls get bigger. Jensen pours more wine when the reservoir gets low, and he adds more paper when the pile gets low. Jared pauses once or twice to rub his belly. There’s a lot of paper, and he’s pretty sure it’s expanding in his stomach. 

“Do you have a limit?” Jensen asks during one of these pauses.

Jared looks up, muzzily. His focus on anything that isn’t the fork or his stomach is a little shot, right now. “Kind of?”

“Kind of,” Jensen repeats.

Jared takes a deep breath and sits up straighter. “You know, sooner or later, it just gets hard to swallow any more. I get stretched out.” He makes a curve in the air to demonstrate.

“And then you can’t eat any more?”

Jared shrugs. “I don’t really try.”

“Are you close now?”

Jared closes his eyes. He rubs a hand over his stomach. he swallows, testing. He can’t tell whether lying or honesty is a worse idea right now. He goes with the truth. “Nah. I’ve got room.”

“Mmm,” Jensen said. He nods towards the dish. Jared sighs and digs again.

There comes a moment when the pile of papers is finally gone. Jensen’s briefcase is empty. Jared’s stomach is full. It is very full. “Ugh,” he says without meaning to.

“Show me,” Jensen says.

“Fuck you,” Jared says, uncaring of the hazards. He leans back in his chair and closes his eyes. “I did what you wanted. I’m not a show pony. Or a stripper,” he adds as an afterthought.

Jensen doesn’t shoot him. He doesn’t swear back. He says, “Maybe I can convince you with some cheesecake?”

Jared opens his eyes. The waiters in this place are like goddamn ninjas. There in front of him, triangular, the color of cream, is a slice of cheesecake. “Uh. I’m pretty full, man. I’m not sure bribing me with food is really the angle anymore.”

Jensen takes his fork, slices a bite of cheesecake onto it, and holds it to Jared’s mouth. “You tell me,” he says. Jared rolls his eyes, but he takes the bite.

This is cake that has died and gone to heaven. Or possibly _he_ has died and gone to heaven. “Mmm,” he moans. 

He reaches for the fork, and Jensen pulls it away. “Ah, ah. Show me your belly, then the cheesecake.”

“Fuck,” Jared says, but there’s no way he’s missing out on the cheesecake. How much room he has or doesn’t have isn’t even a factor. He strips his shirts off again. He doesn’t really feel like standing up, so his belly just sits there in his lap, bloated round and unnatural. He knows he sort of looks pregnant like this. After that dinner, he’d figure probably thirty weeks. “Fuck,” he says again. He’s not as big as after he swallowed yesterday’s watermelon, but dinner has been a whole lot more solid than the watermelon, even before the ream or so of paper soaked in wine. He twists a little and feels the weight of his belly pulling on him. He skims his hand over the tight, swollen surface.

“You don’t puke, I take it.”

Jared looks up, blinking. “Um. No.” He starts to snicker. It takes effort. “You ask me _now_?”

Jensen looks a little sheepish. It is not a look that Jared would, based on their couple-hours’ acquaintance, ever have expected to see. Jensen gets up and comes around to Jared. He lays a hand on Jared’s belly.

“Thought you didn’t want to touch me,” Jared said.

“Quiet,” Jensen says. Jared obeys.

But Jensen seems mostly clinical. He pokes and prods, and Jared has to protest a couple of times, because just because he doesn’t puke doesn’t mean you should be poking your finger into a guy with this much food in him. There’s always a first time.

Finally Jensen stands back. He goes and sits down, and he takes a sip of wine. “Eat your cheesecake,” he says.

Jared does. He’s still not at his limit, wherever that might be, but he’s closer than he’s been in a long time, it feels like, and yet that cheesecake is impossible to resist. It’s rich as Solomon, too. He swears he can feel every bite settle as he swallows it. That’s bonus, almost. It’s been a long, long time since Jared Padalecki ate for the fun of it, much less on top of a belly as huge as the one he’s working on right now. Even so, he’s not sure stuffing his face has every felt so good going down as that cheesecake does.

Finally, finished, he sits back. He slides his hands under his belly, just to feel the heft of it. God, he might be getting a boner off it, in front of this terrifying mobster dude. (Terrifying and _hot_ , while Jared’s being honest.)

“Now what happens?” Jensen asks.

“Um?”

“You shit it all out?”

Jared coughs. When he gets his composure back, he says, “Nah. I metabolize just about everything I eat.”

“Anything recognizable ever come through? You swallow a key, it shows up in the crapper?”

“I haven’t tried a key,” Jared says slowly. “But no, my shit’s pretty much like anyone else’s shit. As far as I can tell.”

“So I have a little keepsake I don’t want to keep anymore, I ask you to swallow it, it’s gone?”

Jared thinks he is missing something here. “Sure?”

“Like a gun, say.”

“Oh.” Jared blinks rapidly, as thought that’ll make him look _less_ stupid. “I’ve never tried a gun, either—” Where the hell would he get one? “—but metal goes down fine, yeah.”

“Or paper. Or meat. Anything. Anything I want gone, you can take care of.”

Jared doesn’t think about _meat_. Steak is meat. Meat is clearly fine with Jared. “As long as it isn’t bigger than a watermelon,” he jokes. Or tries to. Jensen doesn’t appear to see the humor.

“I think that’d be worth investigating. With some training, I think we could up your capacity by quite a bit.”

“Because you know so much about me? What the fuck, man.”

Jensen shrugs. Is there a thing in this world that murders that man’s calm? “I know something about people with powers. So yeah. you could say that. So here’s the deal, Incredible Expanding Man. I keep you fed on whatever the fuck you damn well please, and you make things disappear for me now and then. Documents. Mementos I don’t want to remember. You make some money. Registration never, ever catches wind of you, even if you walked into an agency looking just like you do now. And we see what we can do about those limits you say you’ve never found.”

“I.” Jared rubs his belly again. “What’s the downside?”

Jensen shrugs. “You don’t tell. You don’t cross me. About what you’d expect.”

“I dunno, Jensen.” It sounds like a lot, put out in the open like that, even if Jared was expecting something like this. Although he hadn’t guessed the garbage disposal angle. He should have. It’s kind of brilliant, now that he’s thought of it.

“Figure it out.” Jensen rises to his feet. “Come on, I’ll take you back to that armpit that employs you. You decide by the time we get there.”

“Yeah, okay.” Jared tries to get up, too. It’s hard. “Fuck.” He presses his hand to the globe that is his belly, but that doesn’t do anything for his balance. Jensen comes around the table and takes his elbow, and with that, Jared can stand up. He can’t reach his polo, though, fallen on the floor, so Jensen reaches for that, too. Jared slides it over his head, but the hem sits comically atop his belly, and he’s not going to stretch out his one sort-of-good shirt. “Um.”

“No one will see you,” Jensen says. It sounds like a fact, not a promise. Jensen is one creepy-ass mob guy, so Jared will trust him on that one. 

They make it to the door, Jared at a little bit of a waddle. Jensen’s car is at the curb where he left it, and Jensen’s right; there’s no one in the street to see Jared wobble out to the car and fall gracelessly into the seat.

Once they’re moving again, Jensen turns and asks, “How do you feel?”

“Good,” Jared says, before he can think.

“Good? It doesn’t hurt?”

“Nah.” Jared pats the mound of his dinner with some affection. “It’s just, ugh. It’s a lot, you know? Like I’ve got a belly the size of the Goodyear blimp, and I’m just the skin around it.” It must be the memory of that steak that makes him add, “Feels fucking awesome.”

“Mm.”

Jared doesn’t know how to interpret that, and he doesn’t try. Instead he tries to think about this decision he has to make. Leave Gen, the carnival, to do what? Eat the leftovers of this guy’s dirty work?

“Would I have to kill anyone?”

Jensen glances over, amused. “No.”

“Or beat up on anyone? Or sell drugs?”

“You’re a tool, Jared. I don’t hammer nails with a screw driver. I don’t send you in to do a goon’s job, and I don’t ask a goon to do yours. Although it might be funny.” He glances at Jared’s enormous belly, and Jared feels a shiver. Getting a normal to do what he just did? Only half the people involved on that one would be laughing “So no, I’m not asking you to do anything I think you’ll find all that unsavory. Metaphorically, anyway.”

“Literally?”

“Literally, I’ll probably ask you to swallow some fucking disgusting shit.”

Jared is surprisingly okay with that, he finds. It’s been a long time since he went dumpster diving, and he didn’t always do it _just_ out of hunger. He never told Gen that part.

Then they pull up in front of the darkened carnival. Jensen puts the car in park and says, “And?”

What a rat trap the carnival is. How much Jared hates it. How much he loves how he’s feeling right now, so full on awesome he could float. “Lemme go say goodbye to Gen,” he says. He scrambles unsteadily out the door, both hands braced on the car frame. He waddles past the tents and around to Gen’s camper, and he lets himself in with the key.

Gen’s head pops up from the bed. “Hey,” she says sleepily. “How was your date?”

“Not a date,” Jared says, giddy. “A business proposition.”

“A what?”

Jared makes to climb up into the loft and then realizes how hard his belly is going to make it. “C’mere for a minute. I have to say goodbye.”

“What?” Gen scrambles down now, alarmed. “Whoa, Jared.” She pokes his stomach with a finger.

“Yeah, yeah. Look, it’s been great, I love you, and I’m never going to see this crummy shitheap of a carnival again.”

“Jared—”

“Wish me luck?”

“You’re being stupid,” Gen says, hugging him. “I know you are, and I don’t even know what you’re _doing_.”

“Something stupid,” Jared agrees. He kisses her on the cheek. He looks around the camper, and after a moment’s thought he grabs the horror novel. He’s two thirds through, and he wants to know how they make it out of the haunted hotel.

There’s nothing else. He’s lived here for over a year, and there’s no other thing in the world from it he wants. “Bye, Gen.” He squeezes her fingers, and he lets her go. 

Despite Jared’s vague, unformed fear, Jensen is still waiting out in the car when Jared comes back out of the carnival. Jared staggers down into his seat, still unbalanced and now shaky with sudden nerves.

“You in?” Jensen says, and he’s not asking if Jared’s fastened his seatbelt. 

Jared takes as deep a breath as his gut allows him. “I’m in.”

The End (for now)

**Author's Note:**

> I know this ending is pretty open, but I thought I'd rather call this an ending and add new installments as new stories as I have time. So subscribe to the series if you want to know more about Jared the Incredible Expanding Man and his mob adventures!


End file.
